As a lightning-sparked wildfire continues to spread, burning approximately 12,000 acres of mountainous terrain west of Fort Davis, four Montgomery County fire departments have deployed crews to assist with fire suppression.

The Caney Creek Fire Department, Porter Fire Department, Needham Fire and Rescue and the North Montgomery Fire Department/Emergency Services District #1 met up early Wednesday morning to convoy to the wildfire in Jeff Davis County.

"It is important for us to provide all of the help we can for the fires in Fort Davis especially because a lot of the crews we're helping, helped us during Hurricane Harvey," North Montgomery County Fire Department Chief Jason Oliphant said.

In March, the Montgomery County ESD #6, which is Porter FD, and ESD #1, the North Montgomery County FD, deployed to Fort Stockton for mutual aid through TIFMAS to assist with wildfires near the panhandle.

"On our last deployment, Porter Fire and North Montgomery Fire covered fires anywhere from Ozona, Texas to Fort Stockton to El Paso," Porter Fire Chief Carter Johnson said. "We are happy to help our fellow Texans as we had mutual aid help during Hurricane Harvey and now, we get to return the help and kindness others have shown us during difficult times."

According to information provided by Texas Interagency Coordination Center, the firefighters are deployed by the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System (TIFMAS,) a program maintained by the Texas A&M Forest Service that makes trained firefighters available to help anywhere in the state they may be needed. Texas will compensate for any expenses incurred.

"There are two ways to participate in the TIFMAS program," Johnson explained. "One way is to use department assets like Caney Creek Fire Department and Needham Fire and Rescue where they sent one of their fire trucks, but you can also apply for a grant for an apparatus like North Montgomery Fire for a tanker and Porter Fire where we applied for a grant for a booster-type truck."

According to Johnson, when the state needs these type of apparatuses for fires like they are responding to now, they will request for the trucks to be staffed and respond as mutual aid.

"We make the district at home whole by paying for the salaries of the people who are gone and if we have to backfill those positions, which we do because we're losing personnel, we will pay for any overtime to incur," Johnson said.

Over the past five years for TIFMAS, Porter Fire Department has responded to more than 20 deployments for various natural disasters.

For North Montgomery County Fire, Oliphant believes the experience and training they receive while working together with other fire departments is invaluable and helps them to be better firefighters at home.

"This is a great experience for our crew because they see different types of fires and can bring that training, experience and knowledge back to our communities and know how to fight these types of fires should we have them here," Johnson said. "Our last big fire in the East County area was in 2011; we've had personnel changes so many of these guys weren't with us at that time so this is a good experience to know how to fight these types of fires. Plus, they get to travel to a different place to fight fires."